For small businesses (SMBs) the margins between success and failure are tiny. So, it’s vital to do everything possible to maximise employee performance and minimise costs, and this is where the company’s choice of business technology plays a pivotal role.

Yet research has continually shown that many SMBs are slow to move to modern PCs, even though such a PC Refresh – the act of regularly upgrading computers being used in the organisation -- enables them to cut bottom-line costs and improve productivity.

A 2014 study by Techaisle[1] found that 36% of SMBs had PCs that were four years or older, which resulted in application and system performance issues, malware attacks and connectivity issues for many of the respondents. This, in turn, had a direct impact on diminishing productivity and employee satisfaction.

Today's a good day to stock up on light bulbs for your smart home. Walmart is selling a single Philips Hue White A19 bulb for $10—or for 33 percent off the usual price. This deal is particularly nice since you can buy the exact amount of bulbs you want. Previously, the best price we've seen is a two-pack for $30.

The Philips Hue White A19 is a plain white LED bulb (read our review here). It doesn't have colors and doesn't come with a Philips Bridge. The Bridge is the go-between for the ZigBee-based Hue bulbs and a home network.

In a normal year, Blade’s Shadow cloud-gaming service might seem superfluous: Do you really need to stream games to your PC as components quickly drop in price? But that was before today’s cryptocurrency miners began snapping up GPUs left and right. Now, the Shadow service is something of an option for leasing a pricey GPU, rather than buying one. In our hands-on time with the service, it works acceptably—though a bit of lag, bugs, and an obtuse setup process muddy the experience.

The Shadow service takes a page from its spiritual ancestor, OnLive, the cloud-gaming service that disappeared in 2012, was reborn in 2014, and then sold to Sony. Blade provides a powerful virtual PC, currently housed at or near the company’s Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters. You, the user, are asked to pay $49.95 per month ($34.95 per month if you sign up for a year) to use it—and for now, it’s limited to Californians.

By now, a dual-monitor setup has become commonplace. Multitasking on a single screen is just way too confining. But why stop at two displays? I can speak from experience: Having multiple monitors (and I’m talking three, four, five, or even six) is just…awesome, and something you totally need in your life.

Right now, my main PC has a triple-monitor setup: my main 27-inch central monitor, with a 24-inch monitor on either side. I use my extra monitors for a number of things, such as comparing spreadsheets side-by-side, writing articles while also doing research, keeping tabs on my social media feeds, and, of course, watching Netflix.

The microcode updates have been shipped to Intel’s hardware partners, some of which have already begun passing them along to customers. As always, the best protection against Spectre and Meltdown is to patch your PCs, especially as the new, updated code appears.

Today's a great day for a deal on some crazy fast SSD storage. Amazon, B&H Photo, and Newegg are all selling the 500GB Samsung 960 Evo NVMe M.2 module for $200.

The 960 Evo features V-NAND flash memory, sequential read speeds up to 3,200MB/s, and write speeds up to 1,900MB/s. We didn't review the consumer-grade Evo variant of this drive, but we did review the Samsung 960 Pro and loved it.

The solid-state drive pictured above may look like any other, but don’t be fooled: Samsung’s PM1643 crams a staggering 30.72 terabytes of storage into the traditional 2.5-inch SSD form factor. That’s enough room for 5,700 full HD movies, Samsung says.

Samsung created its 30TB SSD by combining 32 sticks of 1TB NAND flash packages together, each built with 16 layers of stacked 512Gb V-NAND chips. This drive nearly doubles the capacity of Samsung’s previous champion, which topped out at 16TB.

As any IT professional will tell you, certifications are essential for climbing the career ladder. The MCSA: Windows Server 2016 certification demonstrates an individual's ability to administer networks and reduce IT costs, which can open the door to a high-paid position as a network or computer systems administrator, or computer network specialist.

So, if you're looking to broaden your IT employment prospects, picking up this certification is a step in the right direction, and the Lifetime MCSA Windows Server 2016 Bundle can prepare you to ace its exams for $29.

This full-fledged, easy-to-tote first aid softpack is designed to save time and frustration in the midst of an emergency. It's compact and portable, but contains 299 physician-recommended supplies. Among the items neatly organized inside the zippered kit is a first aid guide, vinyl gloves, bandages, cold compress, gauze pads, trauma pad, cotton-tipped applicators, first aid tape roll, antiseptics and all three common OTC pain medications. The kit is currently a #1 best seller on Amazon, averages 4.6 out of 5 stars from over 2,230 customers, and its typical list price of has been reduced to just a hair over $12. Click over to Amazon to see this deal.

With this smart plug from Etekcity, you can turn your appliances on/off remotely from your mobile device, or with your voice via Alexa. Or automate the on/off cycle with a schedule. The plug also monitors and helps control energy usage, and the slow drain that occurs even when devices are powered down. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 2,200 people on Amazon, the 2-pack of smart plugs has been discounted to just $26.99, or $13.50 per plug. See this deal now on Amazon.

When you look at VPN services for regular users, you don’t often see purpose-based server recommendations, such as “use this server for streaming and this one for downloading.” Ivacy VPN, a 10-year-old service officially based in Singapore, stands out by doing just that. (It’s not the only service to take this tack—CyberGhost has a similar purpose-based approach—but it’s still rare.)

Video editing software ranges from free versions that are pretty bare-bones to feature-packed prosumer versions. Indeed, they vary as much as the reasons why people take up video editing—whether to make home videos, to become YouTube stars, to create VR experiences, and more.

Most video editing software for consumers and mainstream users is best used for one or another of these specific functions, but there are a few generalists out there, too. We look at the full spectrum: Free video editing software; paid consumer video editing programs that cost $80 or less; and "prosumer" versions that offer deeper feature sets, though usually for high purchase prices.

Cyberlink PowerDirector 16 Ultra is a prosumer video editor that aims to bring every feature under the sun, including multiple versions of the proverbial kitchen sink, to a video editor that is accessible and affordable. It’s largely successful—there’s nothing else in this price range that brings you this many well-implemented features.

Accessibility is where it falls a little short. The user interface is not always self-explanatory, and the inclusion of so many features means it can be difficult to find what you want. For other prosumer options, as well as mainstream consumer and free video editors that might be simpler, check out our comprehensive video editing software roundup.

Vegas Pro 15 represents a major overhaul of the software that was originally developed by Sony but taken over by Magix. The company’s first post-sale version 14 in 2016 fixed many compatibility issues and bugs neglected by the prior owner.

With Vegas Pro 15, the software is once more competitive with other prosumer video editing suites. It adds numerous modern features that serious video editors expect. The result is one of the best semi-pro video editing applications for the price. You can read about other prosumer packages, plus consumer and even free programs, in our comprehensive roundup of video editing software.

There are certain series where the question “Which one’s the best?” is difficult to answer. Ask someone what their favorite Civilization is for instance and you’re bound to start an argument. (It’s Civilization IV, by the way.) The same goes for Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Fallout, Smash Bros., Mortal Kombat, Tony Hawk, Assassin’s Creed, Street Fighter, Elder Scrolls, and so on and so forth.

Age of Empires? Not so much. People by and large consider Age of Empires II to be the pinnacle of the series. Oh you might find a few holdouts for the original, or for Age of Empires III, but the second game is the runaway fan favorite—as evidenced by the fact Microsoft remastered it back in 2013, before the original.

It’s been over a year since I last played Rainbow Six Siege for any real length of time, and I regret it. Earlier this week I went to play the upcoming Rainbow Six Siege – Year Three content ($30 season pass on Amazon) at Ubisoft’s offices in San Francisco, and to be honest I’d be hard-pressed to talk about what’s new. A lot has been added since last time I checked in, though from what I gather the standout new Operator is Lion—an attacker whose special gadget is basically a legitimate wallhack. More on that later.

If you can't get your shiny new Ryzen APU on the motherboard you bought last year, don't panic: AMD officials have confirmed that they will indeed ship you an older, dual-core chip to help you make it work.

The problem relates to AMD's new Ryzen APU and how it interacts with older stocks of motherboards. It's a classic chicken-and-egg situation: Some older motherboards won't recognize the new Ryzen APU without a BIOS update. And the only way to update that BIOS is to boot the system with a chip that it recognizes.

While some advanced motherboards allow updating a BIOS without a CPU, many budget boards don't. For those few cases, AMD said it would offer a "boot kit" (once you've provided a qualifying APU serial number and other information). That "boot kit," as it turns out, is actually an AM4-based Bristol Ridge APU. In a post by "Hansmuffin" at tech site arstechnica.com, a user wrote that AMD was sending a previous-generation APU to help perform the update.

Intel customers and shareholders are angry about Meltdown and Spectre—angry enough that a total of 32 suits have been filed against the company regarding the two vulnerabilities.

In its annual report, filed Friday, Intel disclosed that 30 customer class-action suits have been filed against the company, plus two additional class-action suits by shareholders. Those suits have been filed both within the United States and abroad. Given a host of uncertainties—how the cases are proceeding, whether damages have been claimed, and the uncertainty of whether the suits will succeed—Intel said it was not estimating potential losses as a result of the litigation.

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SecurityProcessorsPCsBusinessCortana's smart-home powers grow with IFTTT, Honeywell, Ecobee supportFri, 16 Feb 2018 12:03:00 -0800Mark HachmanMark HachmanMicrosoft's Cortana has added support for the IFTTT conditional platform plus a number of smart services, both helping bring Cortana more in line with competing services from Amazon and Google Home.https://www.techhive.com/article/3256267/smart-appliance/cortanas-smart-home-powers-grow-with-ifttt-honeywell-ecobee-support.html#tk.rss_all
Consumer ElectronicsThis week in games: New THQ buys back old THQ, The Evil Within II adds a first-person modeFri, 16 Feb 2018 12:00:00 -0800Hayden DingmanHayden Dingman

The biggest video game news this week is that Valve updated the format for Steam Wishlists—not because I care about Wishlists, but simply because Valve actually updated the Steam interface. Could this be the start of that large-scale overhaul we’ve heard has been coming for like, two years now? One can hope.

In any case, plenty of other news this week too. The Evil Within II now lets you get up-close-and-personal with your monsters, release dates for a slew of games including Where the Water Tastes Like Wine and Warhammer: Vermintide II, a bunch of free-to-try games for your long weekend, and the incredible tale of THQ Nordic slowly reforming the entire THQ library one piece at a time.

KeepSolid’s VPN Unlimited is interesting. It’s a typical VPN service, to be sure, but the company appears to see it as one service in a larger toolkit. In addition to VPN Unlimited, KeepSolid offers a roadmap planning app, an eSignature solution, a privacy-centric browser for mobile, and other services.